World Trade Center versus Black Hawk Down

Considering that the movies World Trade Center and Black Hawk Down are both based on true stories, they hold the power of dragging the audience to the actual time of the occurring events. Both trailers strongly appeal to our emotions of extreme courage and altruism, as well as grief. Black Hawk Down is about inspired young men in Somalia who don’t want to watch a country destroy itself but do something to make a difference. World Trade Center portrays the heroes who went into the wreck of the Twin Towers, in attempt to rescue the victims.

World Trade Center begins with ordinary men with their families, but Black Hawk Down starts with a Somalian man’s warning to the Americans about intruding in their (Somalian) “war.” As the World Trade Center trailer proceeds, the calm music continues but it ends with a tinge of pain and a dash of hysteria. As the men are trapped under the building’s ruins, the little glimpses of their families - eyes filled with fright yet anticipation for their loved ones – touch the audience’s heart. Black Hawk Down begins really calmly as well, but transforms into chaos as soon as the American helicopter (the Black Hawk) hits the ground. Regardless of the risks, the soldiers as young as eighteen years of age fight on. They keep on reminding each other that “what you do right now, makes a difference.” Their audacity and determination revealed through their words gives the audience a sense of pride and hope that the soldiers are going to make it.

Both movies are targeted towards the ordinary people, who can all relate to the grief of losing their loved ones in war or tragedies such as 9/11. Even amongst all these uncertainties and destructions both movies reach out with a gleam of hope. At the peak of the Black Hawk Down trailer, when everything’s blowing up and people are dying, someone says “no one gets left behind, and you know that.” The soldiers are shown helping each other out, hugging and actually living up to the ideal that “it’s not about you but about the man right beside you.” Also, at the end of World Trade Center, Mel Gibson encourages his friend, “you can still see the light,” implying that they shouldn’t give up just yet. The only difference was that in Black Hawk Down the soldiers are trying to reach out to people of Somalia and stop the genocide and in World Trade Center they are trying to rescue the victims of the tragic incident.

Both trailers look very realistic and give an idea about what it was like during the real events for individuals involved. Like the book Everything’s an argument says, “the images have power in and of themselves to persuade (435).” Therefore, the usage of music, words and emotions strongly affect the audiences in ways they would have never imagined to experience in real life.